Dr Joe Vitale

Dr Peta Stapleton and Dr Joe Vitale

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Dr Peta Stapleton (00:01.346)

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Fourth Wave in Therapy. It is my absolute joy today and pleasure to be sitting with someone of greatness, someone whose shoulders I have long been kind of, you know, following. So Joe Vitale, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr Joe Vitale (00:18.794)
Of course, I'm a big fan of you, your work, your two books, and people rave about you and the world, so I couldn't wait for this moment to share it with you.

Dr Peta Stapleton (00:29.112)
Thank you. And I'm so excited today to share a therapy technique, but something that we've embraced too in the EFT world, which I've used for many, many years, but you're quite the expert. So could we start with just a bit of an overview of, and we've got lots and lots of information below in the show notes about this, but particularly about Ho'oponopono, which you're known for and sparked a revolution, if you like, in

finding a place for this in our modern world. But maybe if we could just start with what is it? Like if you were to give your summary of this amazing technique, how do you describe it?

Dr Joe Vitale (01:13.902)
Great question, big question, requires a bit of a lengthy answer, but I'm gonna do my best to honor what you just said and give you a summary. Ho'oponopono is a Hawaiian healing technique. It is fairly esoteric, fairly mysterious, fairly therapeutic, and incredibly powerful. So we'll start with that. It's a...

Dr Peta Stapleton (01:38.892)
Yeah, love it.

Dr Joe Vitale (01:41.554)
Method where you change the outer world by changing your inner world It's entirely focused on you and in fact in the philosophy of hoa pono pono Nothing else exists and nobody else exists. It's all a projection. It's all a movie and you're the projector It's all coming from within you and it requires total responsibility to create any sort of change because you have to accept

that you are in some way, or form creating the reality you see. And you're creating it all on the inside. Again, you're the script writer, you are the projectionist. However, you are unconscious to almost all of the operating principle. So the joy of Ho'oponopono is it's incredibly simple. You are working on the inside, primarily saying four key phrases.

which are, love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you. You're saying them inside yourself. You don't typically say them out loud. I almost never say them out loud. And you never say them to another person unless in situation like this, you're educating them about it because it's all about you. And it's all about inner transformation. So you're saying the four phrases, I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, to your connection to, and this is where you can fill in the blank, higher power,

Cosmos, God, the divine, infinite intelligence, the field of all possibility, the energy vortex that we are part of, your higher power, your higher mind. But you're saying those four phrases of ho'oponopono within yourself to that higher connection as a kind of request. And the request is clean up the mess.

Clean up the mess that's inside of you and more precisely that is clean up the, what Ho'oponopono would call data. You're cleaning up the mindset, the paradigm, the beliefs, the lack, the limitation. And it doesn't matter in Ho'oponopono where it came from. We are assuming you downloaded it from your heritage, from the beginning of time. It was passed down through Carl Jung's term about the collective unconscious. was...

Dr Joe Vitale (04:01.346)
fueled into it and we were tapping into it. And of course we're born and we're little tiny robots being programmed by our big robots, our parents around us. And we're in a big society full of robots and they were all programmed and we just download all of that. And then we get to a point where we realize some parts of my life aren't working. I'm not happy. I'm incomplete. I'm frustrated. I'm trying, but feeling stuck or I'm feeling blocked or I'm wounded.

any number of phrases and scenarios, but that's the wonderful prime opportunity to go within and apply Ho'oponopono on those feelings. And as you do, the magic of Ho'oponopono is it goes in and does the cleaning and the clearing and the sweeping and the rearranging pretty much without you consciously having to do anything more than that. So that's my mouthful.

Dr Peta Stapleton (04:57.366)
And the four phrases that you're mentioning that are part of the clearing process. And is it important for anyone to know where it came from when they might be engaging in the phrases? So you've talked about intergenerational and the collective consciousness and we're programmed, we come to this world with all of that baggage. But do we need to know it for this to work?

Dr Joe Vitale (05:24.61)
That's the beauty of ho'oponopono. You do not need to know. And in fact, even your knowing is probably a miscalculation. We don't remember things accurately anyway. And if we say that, I got the limiting belief from my father, well, maybe you did, maybe you did. But the reality is you got this limiting belief. So what ho'oponopono does is go for the core. It goes for the root cause without you consciously needing to know what it is.

Again, this is a relationship with the divine. That's what the man who taught me Ho'oponopono always called it the divine. And so the divine knows better than me. The divine knows where it came from and it doesn't matter and the divine knows how to clean it up and it doesn't matter. All I know is I want it cleaned up. I'm saying I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you as a kind of prayer or petition to the divine. And then I'm letting go.

to allow the rearranging to allow the cleaning and the clearing to take place within me. I mean, this is oversimplifying everything, but really people can take what I just said and run down the street and start using it. They can take it to the bank right now.

Dr Peta Stapleton (06:37.762)
And tell me if the sticking point for someone was maybe the connection to the divine. Is that one, my mind goes, we can use Ho'opatipono on that itself, but is that something that people do need to embrace in order to like even have the benefits of this?

Dr Joe Vitale (06:48.877)
Yes.

Dr Joe Vitale (06:57.358)
It's a great question. You know, I learned Ho'oponopono around 2005 and brought it to the world around 2006 with the first book, Zero Limits. And I've since written three more books. So there's four books out there about Ho'oponopono. And I'm bringing it up because I've heard from everybody about everything. What their questions were, what the snags were, what the miracles were, what the results were, what the transformations were.

But I almost never hear the question, what if I don't believe in a higher power? Now, I've been ready for the question, because in my mind, thought somebody's got to ask, some atheist is going to say, I don't believe. Yes, I'm just imagining this case where I'm allowing everybody to have their beliefs. And if somebody says I'm an atheist, I don't believe in God, I would say, do you believe in nature?

Dr Peta Stapleton (07:39.896)
not even an atheist, but I'm smart.

Dr Joe Vitale (07:53.352)
And virtually everybody I've ever talked to say, yeah, of course I believe in nature. Nature is what's bringing life and taking life and recreating life. And, we all get transformed. We get recycled into something else because of nature. Well, say the phrases to nature.

Dr Peta Stapleton (08:09.08)
be listening. So I'm so glad I asked because it is so.

Dr Joe Vitale (08:11.65)
No, it's a great question. I'm glad you asked too. I will tell you the number one question and the number one complaint I get is people don't like to say, I'm sorry or please forgive me. Most of the time people are thinking, I didn't do anything wrong. Why should I say I'm sorry or please forgive me? Which are half of the phrases. So the way I explain it and it's important to have this explained is it's not about

It's not about wrongdoing. It's not about punishment. It's more about awareness. And I use the example if you go into a grocery store, shopping store, you're in a busy situation, and there's people with their carts and everybody's walking around and you turn and you bump into somebody. Don't you say, I'm sorry. It's a very natural, polite thing to say. But in saying, I'm sorry, you're not saying that you're guilty of anything.

You're not saying you did anything wrong. Primarily, you're saying, for a moment there, I was unconscious, didn't see you, I'm sorry, and you move on. That's the level of mentality you bring to the table when you say, I'm sorry, please forgive me. You're basically saying, I'm sorry, I was unconscious. Please forgive me and my ancestors, whoever got the program and passed the data on down to me.

They were unconscious too, and we're just saying, I'm sorry, I was unconscious. That's it.

Dr Peta Stapleton (09:39.938)
Yeah, that's probably the most beautiful way to phrase it, isn't it? Because you do, you bump into someone, you immediately, I wasn't aware in that moment and it's the similar kind of, yeah, coming to this. Tell me the backstory with Dr. Hugh Len and obviously your search to find him and you did and that's where Zero Limits, that first book came out. What was it that, you know, drew you to want to really pursue trying and people can learn their story by reading obviously that first book of yours about

Dr Joe Vitale (10:07.95)
Sure. Yeah.

Dr Peta Stapleton (10:08.654)
trying to find this man that had been part of this kind of, you know, institution in Hawaii. I'm not going to steal the story, but briefly, you know, something there kind of really drew you to want to tell this story to the world, but you had to find him first.

Dr Joe Vitale (10:15.234)
Yeah.

Dr Joe Vitale (10:23.566)
Yeah, it was the story itself that captivated me, confused me, baffled me, and intrigued me. Many years ago, it was probably around 2002, 2003, I was at an event, and one of the people with me said, have you ever heard about the therapist who helped heal an entire ward of mentally ill criminals with some Hawaiian method? And I'm like, what? No, I never heard this story. And he said, yeah, it's very unusual. And he did this mysterious process.

but he didn't actually work on the patients. He worked on himself and the patients got better. I'm like, doesn't sound right. Doesn't sound true. Sounds like an urban legend. I believe in magic and miracles. I'm pretty well read. I've been around the globe and the block a few times. And I thought he couldn't heal mentally ill criminals by working on himself? No. So I dismissed the story for an entire year.

I heard the story again and I thought if there's something to this I better find out because what if it's true? What if there's a method I didn't know and it was so powerful that it helped heal an entire ward of mentally ill criminals? If that can happen, what can it do for me and my little problems in the world? And what can it do for other people once I learned it and passed it on? I began as a curious skeptic.

Because at that point there was nothing on the internet. There was nothing. mean, I was doing all the searching and looking under all the rocks and looking at any sort of reference that could lead me to anything. I couldn't find it. I actually hired a private investigator. When I take the bone, I'm really chewing that bone. It's like, well, I've got to get the marrow out of this bone.

And the private investigator found the therapist and the therapist was living in California at the time. I got his phone number and I called him up. I was living in Texas, called him up. I'm completely unknown. I wasn't in the movie The Secret. The Secret hadn't come out yet. So my name hadn't been out there in a bigger way than what it already was from my existing books and my presence on the internet. So he didn't know me. And his name, Dr. E. Hockyel- D. Dr. E. Hockyel-

Dr Joe Vitale (12:43.23)
E. Holly Ocula, Hulen. I always call him Hulen and now you know why. I just stumbled over his first name. And so we had a marvelous conversation where he did tell me about the story. He did tell me it was true. He did tell me it was in the 1980s. It was in Hawaii. And he did say he worked on himself. And I was really intrigued and confused. He said I was just working on myself. But I'm like, how do you work on yourself and help them? And he said, well, I was just

Dr Peta Stapleton (12:49.71)
it's

Dr Joe Vitale (13:12.226)
doing the cleaning and I'm only here to clean. What does that mean? It didn't make any sense. He says I was doing the four phrases of ho'oponopono. What's ho'oponopono? What are the four phrases? He was very kind. We were on the phone for 45 minutes. And at the end he said he was doing a seminar either that weekend or the following weekend. I got on a plane. I went there and I met Dr. Huland and the experience of ho'oponopono then

Dr Peta Stapleton (13:34.936)
had to go.

Dr Joe Vitale (13:41.216)
Nobody knew what it was. I think there were eight people in the room. He was doing these little events around the country and it was word of mouth only. And it was one of the most mysterious experiences because he was very eccentric and mysterious and esoteric and yet as lovable as an old grandfather with some great stories to tell. And I was intrigued. I learned a little bit about the four phrases then at that point, you know, by hearing them for the first time, I didn't have a memory.

And that evening, I developed a urinary tract infection and I was feeling some pain. And I thought, well, let me just try this stupid, crazy, mysterious, weird Hawaiian Dr. Hulen mojo. And I started doing, I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you. And I actually had to write the phrases down because I hadn't memorized them. So I'm looking at my little slip and I go to bed saying, I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you. And when I wake up, there's no infection. And I thought...

I have to explore this. Urinary infection's not a big deal. And yet at the same time, to have it going like that, that got my interest, then combined it with the story of the hospital, and you've got me nailed. And I got to know Dr. Huland. We wrote the first book together, Zero Limits. I did three events with him, Zero Limits one, two, and three. did two in Austin, one in Hawaii, in Maui. And it's one of the luckiest.

historic moments of my life. I was so delighted to learn the method to be with him. And then he told me at one point, says, the divine says, you're the one to bring it to the world. You're the one to write the book. And I was ready. I was ready. I'm like, I'm on this. I didn't know how big it would be. I didn't know how the world would respond. But that's the backstory in short form.

Dr Peta Stapleton (15:37.806)
Just fantastic. And I absolutely am encouraging everyone to jump on those links and read those books. There's quite a few books now that have followed and come out. And there's so many applications, isn't there? Because that, in its essence, it is about, OK, the world's a mirror. The world's a mirror. If I'm not happy with that aspect in that part of my life, I can do this technique. And that's everything, isn't it? Everything from success, I know you wrote about. You spoke to Hugh Lennon and said,

Dr Joe Vitale (15:44.29)
Yes.

Dr Joe Vitale (15:54.798)
and

Dr Peta Stapleton (16:05.248)
One of my books is not selling as well as I would like or and he's like, just do the phrases, do the phrases in the book, that kind of thing. It's everything from that to relationships to I know you talked about. He also does it like a blessing on food that he eats and he loves a hamburger. Am I right in remembering? Loves a hamburger.

Dr Joe Vitale (16:24.398)
Yes, I don't want to offend anybody but there were some vegetarians who thought that dr. Huland was a vegetarian I said no, he's eaten some chili dogs in front of me He's had hamburgers in front of me. The only difference is he would use whole upono pono and bless everything and For him and for whole upono pono everything is alive if you remember from the book the

Dr Peta Stapleton (16:36.942)
Plus.

Dr Joe Vitale (16:50.978)
First time I did an event with him, he wanted to go to the room a few days before the event because he wanted to talk to the room. And he wanted to talk to the chairs in the room. And for me, it was very bizarre. I was doing my best to keep my mind as cracked open as it could be, but he was pulling at both sides of my brain and pulling it even wider. He even had me talking to the room and he says, there's no right or wrong. Just have a conversation and see if it gives you a name. See if it gives you some sort of.

Dr Peta Stapleton (16:55.788)
Yes, sorry. Yeah.

Dr Joe Vitale (17:20.554)
insight or information. And that's the way he was living his life and that's the way Ho'oponopono works, which is also why any problem that anybody could name can be addressed with Ho'oponopono because all the problems we describe are all within ourselves. This is one of the big takeaways that I got from Dr. Huland is so many people, myself including until that moment of awakening,

We blame everybody else. It's the economy, it's the president, it's our neighbors, it's the boss, it's our kids, it's our parents. We point fingers all over the place, but we don't realize that when we're feeling our problem, the only place to feel it is inside ourselves. So when we point and go, the IRS is a problem, but it wants to audit me. Where do you experience it as a problem? It's in you.

When you say, my daughter is giving me a hard time or she's addicted and I don't know what to do about it, where do you experience that problem? Inside you. So Ho'oponopono points everything inside no matter what it is. I have people that their pets have been sick. You know, well, where do you experience the upset about your pet? In you. Ho'oponopono takes care of you. And when you arrive at that more serene and accepting place,

Dr Peta Stapleton (18:28.28)
Yeah.

Dr Joe Vitale (18:49.954)
The magic happens where the outer world reflects your change. The IRS might drop the audit. The daughter might get off the addiction. The pet might suddenly get up and start playing ball. It's different for everybody, but the whole point of Ho'oponopono is that anything is possible when you work with the divine, you address whatever is going on inside you, and you use the four phrases as the kind of knock at the door.

At the divine and say I got a problem here. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you and so forth

Dr Peta Stapleton (19:24.994)
Thank you. Yeah, amazing. And I've got to tell you just to finish, because there's so many stories in all the books that people can read. Just yesterday's staff meeting, it was dragging on a little bit as it does sometimes towards the end of the year. And of course, you have the staff member who has to just add one more question out of curiosity. And I instantly went into the four phrases internally. And the whole thing just stopped and everyone left and it was all over.

Dr Joe Vitale (19:31.394)
Thank

Dr Peta Stapleton (19:55.278)
it is those outcomes and I do encourage everybody, you do really need to try this to see the outcomes, to see the application of just that personal responsibility, but then the release that people can achieve. I'm not going, I want to leave everyone hanging because there's actually more to this and there's certainly more phrases as well and something that

Dr Joe Vitale (20:18.402)
Always. Yes.

Dr Peta Stapleton (20:23.02)
We'll leave everybody to kind of read the first few books just to explore a little bit more. I certainly know a lot of EFT practitioners who use the four phrases in their tapping as well. So there's a lovely kind of effect. Yeah.

Dr Joe Vitale (20:33.588)
And I do both. And I actually came out with a program years ago where I combined tapping with Ho'oponopono. And tapping and Ho'oponopono are still my go-tos today. I do, well, Ho'oponopono has become more automated. It's the self-talk. It's the background audio in my head. So the chatter that used to be nothing but criticism is now, I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me. Thank you. I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me. Thank you. It's become more automated.

Dr Peta Stapleton (20:41.784)
Thank you.

Dr Joe Vitale (21:01.858)
But I also combine it with tapping because I know they both work in the same direction. We're both going for this clearing and this healing for ourselves. And as we get to that place of clarity, whether we tapped our way there or ho'oponopono'd our way there, the outer world starts to respond differently. It really does reflect, it really does mirror the change within us.

Dr Peta Stapleton (21:26.422)
Yeah, absolutely. It's that coming to acceptance, isn't it? Through both those modalities that just is so powerful and empowering. Jo, you are prolific in your writing. You've got more than 75 books. Yeah, outstrip me. Is there one coming out that we need to know about? Is there writing that's coming out of you at the moment?

Dr Joe Vitale (21:30.432)
Hmm.

Dr Joe Vitale (21:47.138)
Well, the most recent book is called Zero Limits Living. Zero Limits Living. And I think it's worth mentioning because I had an aha experience where everything that I had done before came together in a synthesis. I mean, I was the law of attraction guy, so I was in the movie The Secret. And right during that same time, I became the whole Pono Pono guy.

which seemed like there was a bit of a split there because law of attraction and whole opponent didn't seem like they went together. And then I, of course, talked about tapping since the 1990s somewhere in there. But all of it came together in this book called Zero Limits Living where I saw life as these three pillars. And you needed all three pillars. You have the mindset pillar, which a lot of people just spend time on the mindset, which is great, but that's not the only pillar. There's the movement pillar.

And I'm a guy who you mentioned 75 books. They tell me I've written 90 books. Even I'm surprised. I'm writing them, not counting them. So maybe it is 90, but that's movement. I'm taking action. And a lot of people don't take action. And then the third one, which I think is really important too, is mysticism, which is where ho'oponopono falls into place. So I think the new book, Zero Limits Living, is in many ways the most important one.

Dr Peta Stapleton (22:44.77)
and adopt it.

Dr Joe Vitale (23:08.418)
because it brings everything together so it makes life more understandable and more doable. But to answer your question, yes, of course I'm working on another book. I get inspired and I start writing and I'm very excited about it. I'm in my 70s and this feels like my legacy book. And so I'm really loving it and it's loving me back. And I'm working to really make it the one that.

Dr Peta Stapleton (23:27.885)
end.

Dr Peta Stapleton (23:36.192)
I can't wait. Love a good book, Jo. It has been my absolute joy to be able to talk to you today and our colleague, Brad Yates, who connected us, who we both adore in our own world. So thank you so much for sharing. I truly hope that therapists listening in will really go and explore this a bit further and see how much it can actually impact their own lives as well.

Dr Joe Vitale (23:59.31)
It's been a great joy to be here. The only sad note is we're ending.

Dr Peta Stapleton (24:04.674)
we are. I'm sorry. I think we do that again. I think you're right. Thanks so much. Thanks.

Dr Joe Vitale (24:07.064)
So can we say to be continued? So I feel a little better.

Dr Joe Vitale (24:14.56)
I love you and I love what you're doing and congrats on your books and your successes.

Dr Peta Stapleton (24:19.032)
Thanks so much, Joe.

Resources

About Dr Joe Vitale

Dr. Joe Vitale is a world renowned Personal Development expert and star of the blockbuster hit movie on the Law of Attraction, The Secret. Author over over 75 books on a wide range of development topics, he's helped thousands at his live events and millions through the internet, his books and educational programs. Dr. Vitale has developed The New Awakening with love and all of the skills and knowledge he's gained in over 35 years of helping people create the lives they desire and deserve.

Website: https://www.mrfire.com/

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